Notes from a Love Story
by surrendersomething
Summary: Richard Castle writes Kate Beckett bestselling novels.  He also writes her notes.  This is their story.
1. Chapter 1

**Notes from a Love Story**

**Summary: **Richard Castle writes Kate Beckett bestselling novels. He also writes her notes. This is their story.

**Spoilers: **Part one, anything up to and including 'An Embarrassment of Bitches'. Part two, anything up to 'Pandora' and 'Linchpin' is fair game.

**Disclaimer: **Nothing I make reference to is mine. Song lyrics throughout are from 'I Won't Give Up' by Jason Mraz. I don't own them either.

**Author's Note: **so, I watched the lyric video for Jason Mraz's 'I Won't Give Up' a little while ago (please look for it on YouTube if you want to see the inspiration, or let me know and I'm more than happy to send you the link) and I do hold it solely responsible for what you're about to read. If you know or watch it, I'm sure you'll see why. I had a couple of days off work this week and wrote this almost entirely during that time. I'm pretty sure that was more productive than I would have been at work. This isn't complete yet, there will be more to come and it's already finished. But it was pretty long, and split fairly nicely. Stick with it – this first part takes a look over what we have seen so far. Next chapter, I'll be breaking away from canon a little, and there's good stuff to come. I do owe a thank you to Tammy for listening to me prattle on about post-it notes for ages with no real clue what I was talking about, and for reading this through and pointing out all the stupid things I'd done. So thank you.

That aside, enjoy and as always I'd love to hear what you think.

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><p><em>I see that you've come so far<em>

_To be right where you are._

* * *

><p>He leaves her notes.<p>

He _is_ a writer. Sometimes she thinks that means she should be less surprised. That maybe her heart shouldn't skip a beat every time – words _are_ his craft, after all. They make him who he is. But somehow, every sticky note and every little scrap of paper, every corner of a case file and every creative surface he finds makes her heart beat a little bit faster. Because Richard Castle might be writing bestseller after bestseller about _her,_ but these little notes speak words that are for her ears alone.

She can't remember the first note he wrote her, but she keeps the first note that means something.

He writes it on a scrap of paper and secures it firmly under her keyboard, in the days before she allows him to keep a constant supply of sticky notes on his corner of her desk. The note is simple, to the point and completely uncharacteristic of the him that she knew back then.

_If you need to talk._

Five words, and a small drawing of a cell phone. She remembers sitting at her desk, gripping the scrap of paper between her fingers and not knowing whether to laugh or smile or cry. _That man, _she remembers thinking. And even now, every time she thinks those two words to herself, she is taken right back to that moment.

They are working the kidnapping of two year old Angela Candela at the time and her heart has been racing for what felt like days. She _hates_ cases with children. She hates Will Sorenson for being there, for coming back and for asking for her and for breaking the heart that she had never really fixed . She hates Montgomery for not putting his foot down, and she is trying her very hardest to hate Richard Castle through the entire thing, for being him and for being there and for poking his nose in where it isn't wanted.

The whole heady combination has put her in a spin, and it has been making her nauseous. She has lashed out at just about everyone she can think of, including him. _I need you to go home. _ She didn't find the note until long after he had walked in on that kiss in the kitchen that had torn her heart apart a little bit more, and even though they were still in the middle of the case, somehow with five little words and a drawing she knows were designed to make her smile, he gives her a moment of calm.

She never thanks him. Never acknowledges the little scrap of paper and doesn't tell him how her finger hovers over the call button on her phone for longer than she considers acceptable.

It is the first note that she saves. She tucks it away at the back of her desk drawer, smoothing it down with her fingers before weighing it down with her stapler, shutting the door firmly and standing up with the determination to face this case.

The determination that she now acknowledges was down to him.

She doesn't save another note for a while, after that. That's not to say that he doesn't write them, but like the notes that have come before, most of them are trivial. Some are thoughts on cases that she starts to realise are more and more insightful. The rest are jokes, facts, things he thinks she will find funny and things he thinks will just plain annoy her. Innuendos, inappropriate questions and downright rude drawings grace her desk.

Some leave her hiding a smile, covering a laugh with a cough. Some leave her fighting a blush and glaring at him.

Every one brightens her day.

* * *

><p><em>We had to learn how to bend without the world caving in<br>I had to learn what I've got, and what I'm not_

* * *

><p>He doesn't write her many notes after that first summer. Not for a while, anyway.<p>

She has rubbed the edges of that scrap of paper hidden away in her drawer smooth during the summer, as her heart cracked open a little more with his betrayal. When she lets him back into the precinct, the personal side of their relationship is cautious and tentative. The first note she remembers from back then wasn't even words.

He draws a smiley face on a post-it and sticks it crookedly on the corner of her screen. She had told him to go home while she spoke to their latest victim's family. Speaking to the family leaves her battling tears stinging at the back of her eyes (she can't remember the case, now, but she remembers that).

Until she sits down at her desk and sees that damn smiley face, crooked and slightly off centre and entirely perfect. She moves it slightly before she goes home, just enough for him to notice, straightening it and pressing it down firmly with her thumb.

It's the first time that she acknowledges any of the notes he has written.

And that's like carte blanche. The notes had start up again in full force, and she remembers finding it harder and harder to fight back the smiles.

He doesn't write her a note after she shot Coonan. After every type of takeout under the sun and the fact that she has shot a man who might have given her answers to save Castle's life, after all the tears she has shed, a note would somehow have trivialised the moment that she starts to think differently about him.

She isn't in love with him, not by a long shot, but it's different. She likes having him around, pulling her pigtails, and that's something worth being honest about.

He leaves her a sweet, heart-warming little joke the next morning that she now knows came from Alexis, and things continue on as usual.

Except a little more. He was a little more, she was a little more.

He sneaks a birthday card in amidst the parade of notes. It has a picture of an elephant on the front rather than the inappropriate joke she expects, and it sits on her desk for a week before it makes its way into her desk drawer, squirreled away at the back.

She lets him keep a block of sticky notes on the corner of her desk as long as he keeps the dish on her desk stocked with her favourite candy in the form of rent. She regrets that particular decision when she is subjected to a particularly explicit series of drawings and questions after the bondage case and their visits to Lady Irena's House of Pain that made her blush and throw a series of hard objects at him. By this point she has twisted his ear more times than she can remember for using her phone as his own personal notepad, and when she checks her phone at brunch with her dad the next weekend and comes face to face with a note that he'd programmed to pop up on her phone when he wasn't there, she threatens to shoot him and refuses to tell her dad what she read.

The first time he spends the night in her apartment, in a protecting you from a serial killer way rather than _that _way (that will come later) he leaves her a shopping list on her fridge the next morning.

It got blown up the next day, but it's the thought that counts.

By the time the next summer rolls around, the summer that she thinks of as the one when he broke something she had barely acknowledged that she wanted, she has saved a few more notes, tucked them safely into the back of her desk drawer. She's wise enough now to know that she broke something for him that summer too in the weeks she spent with Tom Demming. The little notes she had already come to cherish all but stopped, and those that he did leave her were almost clinical in their relevance to their current cases, but when he left, she couldn't see past her own hurt, two summers in a row.

She throws away the pad of sticky notes that he left on the corner of her desk the week after he leaves for the Hamptons, but something makes her keep those notes in her drawer.

And that something is the fact that she has stopped denying that she is falling for him.

* * *

><p><em>We've got a lot to learn<br>God knows we're worth it_

* * *

><p>When he comes back after that second summer, it takes a while for them to find their groove again. Betrayal stings, no matter how much she tries to pretend that he didn't break her heart, not at all. As he tries to find a way to apologise that doesn't involve getting himself arrested again, he opts for a small, sweet string of Nikki Heat quotes.<p>

Once he's back in her good books, he writes out a paragraph of one of the steamier scenes and hides it between two sheets of her paperwork when she's getting coffee. She balls the piece of paper up and throws it at him when she finds it and tries not to feel guilty because it still sends a thrill through her even though she's with Josh and he's with Gina (and he didn't break her heart this summer).

He leaves her a few _Grey's Anatomy _quotes after they investigate a case at County Hospital that she's ashamed to say she recognises, and he blames them on Alexis when she calls him on it. He doesn't know it, but she'll only let him use that excuse once.

They go through a period after 3XK when he doesn't leave her any notes at all. She wants to write one for him, but he's given her a lot to live up to and by the time she manages to think of anything that she would consider writing for him, he's moved on to a small and anatomically inaccurate series of male stripper cartoons, and she's so happy to see that spark back in his eyes that she can't actually bring herself to berate him for them.

She is subjected to a never-ending string of doppelganger jokes during and after Natalie Rhodes' visit. The woman seriously freaked her out, and she clips him round the ear more times than she can remember.

_Would the real Detective Beckett please stand up?_

_Are you the real Detective Beckett? _

_[ ] Yes _ _[ ] No_

She keeps them, and she doesn't know why. She also doesn't know how to explain to Josh why she finds it quite so funny when he flicks through the music channels one night and the offending Eminem song is playing. They have a quiet week after Natalie leaves, and she almost chases him out of the precinct when he goes all sixth sense on her one afternoon.

_I see dead people._

It's stuck to her screen with a crooked smiley face in the corner because he watched it with Alexis the night before and he says he's never realised just how _appropriate_ it is. She doesn't know why that one joins the ever-growing pile in her desk drawer either, but his words ring in her ears every time she catches a glimpse of it.

After he buys the Old Haunt and they leave the precinct singing Billy Joel, his notes are inspired by a series of songs, and for weeks the search history on her phone shows line after line of lyrics as she searched for the more obscure ones. Her favourites are the ones that she's embarrassed not to have to search for, but he should be embarrassed too for knowing them in the first place so she doesn't feel too bad.

He's still doodling magic tricks around the time she gets the call from Detective Raglan. He gives her flowers instead of a note when Montgomery kicks them out of the precinct, and even through the tears and the pain she smiles.

She can't remember the last time that anyone bought her flowers.

When she gets back from her first visit to Sing Sing there is a small, cream coloured envelope lying on her doormat. There's nothing written on the front, and she knows even before she flips it open with her nail that it's from him. It crosses her mind that the first person to come to mind should really be her boyfriend, but Josh doesn't buy into sentimental things like love letters and flowers, and as she pulls out the small sheet of paper that contains only one word, she knows that this one word from Castle means more than anything Josh could ever write.

_Partners._

Because she hasn't had a partner in a _really_ long time.

She keeps the small series of superhero drawings he sticks to her screen every day of the week after they save the city from a dirty bomb (and nearly die in the process). She takes them home when she has trouble sleeping, and finds herself flicking through them every time she can't get warm. She brings them back to the precinct though, because somehow they don't belong in the life she's living at home. She laughs so hard she almost cries at the ridiculously crude superman joke she thinks he probably stayed up all night finding, and it doesn't escape the rapid fluttering of her heart that she _never_ laughs this hard with Josh.

The only thing resembling a note that she ever takes home permanently with her (and as a result, the only one that Josh ever sees) is the signed _Temptation Lane_ photograph he gives her. It takes pride of place next to her DVD collection, and she still remembers the look on her dad's face the first time he sees it.

She doesn't tell Josh the significance. She lets him pass it off as Castle being Castle, in that slightly condescending way he has.

The day after Alex Conrad leaves the precinct, she finds a note that she doesn't actually think was meant for her. He has doodled in the corner of a page, like he does when he's thinking. She finds them fascinating and takes the chance to study them whenever he forgets to throw them out. This one has three words scrawled in the centre of the top line.

_One writer girl._

She keeps it, even if it wasn't really meant for her.

When they get back from LA, her heart is swimming in the what if's of the door that she opened and the mystery that he will never solve, the scary, unknown feelings she has for her current partner battling the loss of her training officer and a horrible sinking feeling that comes every time she thinks of Josh.

He never asks her what was in Royce's letter, and he somehow knows to limit his notes to a series of beauty pageant jokes until she can breathe a little easier.

Not that it lasts for long.

* * *

><p><em>I won't give up on us, God knows I'm tough enough (I am tough, I am loved)<br>We've got a lot to learn (we're alive, we are loved), God knows we're worth it_

* * *

><p>She doesn't have a single note from him with her over the summer. As she struggles to heal in the tiny cabin, it feels like her heart is physically breaking over and over again. Recovery takes absolutely everything she has to give, and even when her shattered muscles can hold her up for long enough, she finds herself too scared to step outside. She knows that if she can barely cope with the physical recovery there is no way she can have him there. Knows the things that she cannot deal with would shatter them both into pieces before they have even really begun. And so she doesn't find her finger hovering over the call button (even though he loves her).<p>

She would give anything for the little stack of notes in the back of her desk drawer, though. That's what she misses so painfully that the loss tracks tears down her cheeks.

Tears that are from nothing but the type of heartbreak she knows only he can cause.

The first three cases that they work when she returns to work, she is painfully aware of the fact that he doesn't leave her a single note, unless you count the angrily scrawled signature on her copy of Heat Rises. She tries to blame it on the fact that he's doing everything he can not to piss off the new Captain, but as her scars burn painfully and her muscles threaten to turn in on themselves and stop supporting on her, it _hurts_.

One day, he cuts out his favourite frame from his new graphic novel and tapes it to her screen. She holds it so tightly that the paper crumples in her fingers, and then weighs it down at the back of her drawer with her stapler to undo the damage.

For a long time, that's the note that means the most to her. Eventually, with the help of her therapist, she will learn that it speaks of love and forgiveness in a way that only he can.

The weeks and months go on. She prints him out some details of colleges to suggest to Alexis, because she wants to help and it hurts something deep inside of her that she's probably his daughter's least favourite person at the moment. He writes her a hilariously accurate review of his newly acquired piece of artwork, and she laughs out loud at a series of Ghostbuster quotes that seem like they'll never end. She keeps one of them.

_I ain't afraid of no ghosts. _

They cycle through a series of his favourite films after that (Forbidden Planet is her favourite), and he's just getting started on King Kong when they catch a case that has some disturbing links to a group of consenting adults who like to dress up as furry animals.

The boys don't understand why neither of them can keep a straight face.

She tells him to stop trying to encourage the Beckett flavoured cases when they close that one, and then has to tell him very soon after to stop trying to encourage trouble full stop. She draws a small coupon the day after the bank robbery and leaves it on his side of the desk.

_I owe Kate Beckett: Paperwork_.

It disappears, and she hopes that he keeps it.

Even the boys get involved when they start a face-off of Elvis lyrics. She wins and puts the three of them to shame, because what they don't know is that her father practically raised her on that sort of music. She's not quite sure how they managed to avoid Gates with that particular note exchange. If she's honest she's not entirely sure how they have managed to continue their little ritual full stop without Gates using it as an excuse to remove her writer from the precinct, but she crosses her fingers with every note that it continues.

As they segue out of Elvis lyrics and back into their normal note exchanges, she finds herself starting to think about what the notes really mean, and where they go next. Where she wants them to be already, in a world where nothing is holding her back.

And then the sniper hits and she stumbles off the ledge she's been so precariously balanced on.

Esposito's words are ringing through her ears when she sits in Dr Burke's office a couple of days after they close the case. _You think it's a weakness? Make it a strength. _ And she's not thinking about the bullet wound.

This is her third session since they closed the case. Dr Burke cleared his seven o'clock slot for her for the whole week when she showed him the harsh white bandage on her arm, and she feels slightly less off-kilter with that safety net beneath her. Tonight especially she feels a little bit more balanced despite the pull at her chest and the lingering burn in her muscles from the exertion of the case and she thinks it must show, because he wants to talk about Castle.

When she doesn't know how to answer his questions, she tells him about the notes.

He asks her to bring one with her to her next session, and she reaches into her desk drawer at six thirty the next evening and only hesitates for a moment before swiping the top note off the pile and sliding it into her pocket. As she hands it over, she can feel the blush spreading over her cheeks. This man has written three bestsellers that some people think are love letters to her, but these notes are so much more to her than the books will ever be. There are only two words written on this one.

_Pretty girl._

The speech bubble drawn around them points to the mouth of a small, cartoon parrot. He left it on her desk the morning after they closed the case.

Somehow, he had known just how to give her the laughter she hadn't realised she needed.

When, in the spirit of trying to be more, she can't give him a good reason not to start chipping away at the wall that separates them (and after she's struggled to explain just why the note had such a profound effect on her with anything other than _it's Castle_), Dr Burke suggests that she uses the notes as her hammer and starts chipping away at the wall. She thinks about it on her way home, and finds that she walks into her apartment with a smile on her face and Castle's note tucked safely in her pocket. Because she realised something while she listened to her therapist speaking.

She _wants_ this to be the way their relationship starts.

She's petrified, cautious and completely turned upside down, but it's the first night in a week that she sleeps with only thoughts of what her life could be like. What _their_ life could be like.

It becomes one of Dr Burke's standard questions once their appointments go back to weekly rather than daily. Once she can stand tall again without her muscles buckling under the physical and emotional trauma. _Tell me about the notes this week_. Dr Burke encourages her to acknowledge them. Talk about them. Smile at her writer some more.

And she does.

She even sticks one of his remarkably inappropriate notes to his forehead one very slow afternoon, and laughs properly for what feels like the first time in weeks at the wide, happy smile that crosses his face.

If this is what chipping away at the wall feels like, she wants to use every hammer he gives her.

The remarkably accurate drawing of a tiger stays tacked to the corner of her screen for almost a month. He sticks most of the notes he leaves her on top of it, but she doesn't take it down until he covers it with a little cartoon dog and she starts to get questions about the variety of animal species on her desk.

* * *

><p><em>Our differences they do a lot to teach us how to use<br>The tools and gifts we got yeah, we got a lot at stake_

* * *

><p><em>tbc <em>_(you didn't think I would leave it there, did you?)_


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes from a Love Story**

**Summary: **Richard Castle writes Kate Beckett bestselling novels. He also writes her notes. This is their story.

**Spoilers: **Up to and including 'Pandora' and 'Linchpin'.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own anything. Song lyrics throughout are from 'I Won't Give Up' by Jason Mraz.

**Author's Note: **Thank you so much for the lovely response to the first chapter, I'm so glad you enjoyed it. Second and final chapter is here – we're breaking away from canon after the events of the two-parter here, and I'd love to hear what you think. I had an absolute blast writing this, it felt incredibly natural and I really hope I've done their relationship justice.

* * *

><p><em>I see that you've come so far<em>

_To be right where you are. _

* * *

><p>The night they close the case where they almost drown in the Hudson and his former muse turns out to be nothing like his memories, he sticks a post-it note to the back of her new cell phone with two words scrawled in a hand slightly hastier than usual, and is gone before she can get back from the bathroom.<p>

_Call me_.

She doesn't. Instead, she goes round before she can talk herself out of it. When he opens the door, she holds out the note and when he takes it, she kisses him.

She falls asleep later that evening in the corner of his ridiculously comfortable couch. When she wakes up alone the room is dark, but she can see his note stuck to the coffee table next to the glass of wine she only managed to drink half of, before the gentle caress of his fingers and the light brush of his lips on her temple lulled her into sleep.

There's a soft beam of light that guides her to his office, and she expects to find him writing. Nothing like a brush with death (and a kiss or three) to inspire a writer like Richard Castle, right? What she finds is nothing of the sort.

His desk chair is turned away from his desk, and she can see the closed lid of his laptop as she stands barefoot in the doorway. He is staring at the darkened screen of his smart board, and when she taps lightly on the doorframe to signal her presence, he turns his chair slowly and she sees that he is holding a folded sheet of paper in his hands, almost reverently.

The look on his face almost undoes her. The look on his face says _it's about your mother, _and she feels too raw and unravelled, with a heart that she's only just patched back together enough to kiss him, for this.

Her scar pulls tightly at her chest and reminds her not only that she almost drowned, but also that she's not really that patched together at all. She digs her nails into her palms and forces herself not to rub at it because damn it, that man is not seeing her breaking when he's obviously got something that will break her even more.

She can't breathe as he presses the folded sheet into her hands, and she has to blink more than once before she can see through blurred eyes that the four letters printed on the top spell out her name. He tells her that he has something to show her, and that once he's shown her he wants her to go home and read the letter.

Then he turns the smart board on.

She doesn't remember walking out of his apartment, doesn't remember the cab ride home and doesn't remember climbing the stairs to her apartment. All she remembers is collapsing on the floor against her front door as sobs wrack her body, with a burning in her chest that has everything to do with the bullet and betrayal and her somehow unyielding love for this man.

With his letter clenched in her fingers.

When she finally manages to unfold it, the paper is crumpled and creased and she has smudged a couple of words almost beyond recognition with the tightness of her grip.

_Kate, _he begins, _I don't want to apologise. I don't want to be here again, causing you to feel like this, but I need you to believe me when I say that I had no choice. All I'm asking is that you listen. _

It doesn't take anything more for the tears to start to fall again, and by the time she has finished reading, there's an entire, painful section that has almost been wiped out by her tears.

She doesn't know how long she sits on the floor that night gripping the letter, but by the time she manages to wrangle her thoughts and her tears into some sort of order, her muscles are burning and contracting in sharp spasms that make her think it's been too long. The case was physically gruelling and being shunted into the Hudson had left her scars burning and her muscles wrecked. Now that it's over, and there's no more adrenaline to keep her going, she's paying for it.

She shuts him out every time she hurts, but somehow even through the pain that burns through every muscles spasm, all she really wants tonight is him. He hasn't really seen any of her recovery, not the stuff that hurts, and aside from the knowledge that she is still seeing her physical therapist, she knows that he probably thinks that she's physically fine.

She hasn't given him cause to think otherwise.

Hasn't let him see this. The way that she is wrecked and next to useless by the end of a tough case. The way that she actually takes her allocated days off these days, because some days she needs to do nothing but lie in bed and let her body recover.

That's what she should be doing right now, but all she can think of is him.

When she finds the strength to pull her cell phone out of her bag, she finds three more post-it notes stuck to the screen in the neat and somehow beautiful cursive that is uniquely his.

She reads them in order.

_I'm sorry _

_I love you_

_(I know you remember)_

_Please forgive me_

She does remember, and once she drags her battered and bruised body back to his doorway, barely able to hold herself up, she hasn't written the words for him.

She says them, instead.

They spend the night on top of the covers on his sinfully comfortable bed because she just couldn't move any further, but when she wakes in his arms the next morning with his arms around her and the warm span of his hands soothing the muscles in her abdomen, she finds that she doesn't hurt as much as she was expecting.

Physically or emotionally.

She keeps every one of the notes from that night, from _call me_ (which she took from his coffee table the next morning) to _please forgive me_. She places them in a small box in order, and keeps it tucked away at the top of her bookshelf.

It seems appropriate, for her writer.

He passes her small card the next time he takes his seat at her desk, with a cartoon of a little girl with pigtails on the front. Inside, he has written one word.

_Always. _

When she gets home that night she takes the box down and adds the card, still battling the smile she's been fighting off all day. Because somehow, even though they almost crashed and burned before they had even begun, all she can think is _that man_, still.

Nothing much changes, at least not immediately. He still leaves notes all over her desk, but now he leaves them on her kitchen table and her coffee table too, when they share dinner after a long day or a tough case. They are both doing their best to repair the damage to their relationship, keeping a tight hold on a thin rope of trust that they somehow didn't quite manage to snap.

Slow is the order of the day.

The next time that he leaves a particularly sweet one obscured by her keyboard on her desk at work, she removes the pile of notes from the top drawer of her desk and transfers them all to the box on her bookshelf. She leafs through them as she does, and even all together, they don't seem that scary.

That's not to say she doesn't get spooked, though. She does. She gets scared to the point of wanting to keep him close and wanting to run all at the same time. More than once. It's a confusing, overwhelming muddle of emotions that she still feels highly unprepared to deal with, even after all this time with him.

He steps up to the edge and talks her back with a note, every time.

One time, he draws her a picture of a swimming pool (he adds waves in the water, just to make sure) when she falls asleep next to him on her couch one evening and he _knows_ she's overthinking everything. He adds a diving board at the end and draws an arrow pointing to it. She knows that he's trying to show her it's not so scary. She finds it when he's in the bathroom, and she's sleepy and scared but she laughs anyway because sometimes she really does think he writes down (or at least remembers) _every_thing she says, near death experience or not.

She adds a set of steps somewhere in the middle of the pool when she finds his pen, and draws a new arrow pointing to them, crossing out his. He picks it up when he comes back out of the bathroom and his eye soften as he walks her to her bedroom door, kisses her goodnight, and lets himself out, all without saying a word. That doesn't feel scary at all.

When she wakes up the next morning, the picture is stuck to her bedroom door and all she wants to do is dive in.

He has installed his own notepad app on her new phone, and it automatically saves his messages unless she deletes them. She's long past the point of twisting his ear for it (unless you count the times when he uses her phone to map out a plot point for the new novel because he's worn the battery down on his own with his excessive rounds of Angry Birds, because she really _hates_ to be spoilt), but when she passes Lanie her phone to call for takeout one night and the screen unlocks onto a message she hadn't read herself, she twists his ear for it the next morning. She hasn't discussed her rapidly developing relationship with her writer or the chaste goodnight kisses they have become partial to sharing with her best friend recently, and _that _makes it an incredibly awkward conversation.

The morning after they sleep together for the first time, while she lies between his luxurious sheets and relives every glorious, toe-curling moment, he makes her pancakes and quotes Ryan and Esposito on the note he leaves under her plate.

_Thank you SO much for last night._

When she reads it, she laughs and takes him right back to bed to show him that it's not just last night he has to be thankful for.

He doodles hearts on the sleeve of her coffee cup a couple of weeks later, and Esposito notices them before she does. She has an excuse, a story and an insult to him all rolled into one ready to slip off her tongue, but she takes a breath before she speaks, and finds herself saying nothing.

She keeps the coffee cup sleeve along with his other notes, because it reminds her of the idyllic, peaceful shift when she managed to render not one but all three of her boys truly speechless.

The notes he leaves on her desk don't change that much even when most people know that they're in a relationship (except for the series of 'helpful' notes he leaves all over her paperwork when she threatens to withhold sex if he doesn't do his fair share). For the most part, he actually doesn't need her to draw the lines between their professional and private lives. The fact that they _have _a private life at all seems to make the separation easy for him. The jokes and the cartoons and the insightful little comments continue to appear on her desk and her computer screen and even attach themselves to the sleeve of her jumper when he's really bored, but he saves the notes that reveal the fact that he is definitely a relationship man for her dresser and her coffee table and the corner of her bathroom mirror.

It reaffirms something that she learnt a long time ago, that the Rick Castle she's in a relationship is nothing like the Rick Castle who graces (graced?) page six. When something matters to him, he's fiercely private and a little bit possessive. It surprises her every day that she actually likes it, and as a result, it's the notes he writes her outside of the precinct that she tends to keep these days.

Sitting at the bar at the Old Haunt one night, she even lets him write a short description of Nikki Heat for his next novel on the inside of her arm because he has a pen but no paper and he's the wrong side of sober and doesn't want to forget it.

She takes a photo of it for him _and _for her own memory, and even though that photo will later grace the box on her bookshelf, he still has a _lot_ of making up to do after she's forced to explain it to Lanie later that night.

That's not the only time that he writes on her, either. He finds a lot of creative ways to use his words in bed that don't involve a pen at all, and figuring out what he's writing on her skin soon becomes her favourite kind of foreplay.

The first time she takes him to meet her dad, properly, he manages to leave a sticky note on her steering wheel while she's getting ready for brunch.

_Relax. Everyone loves Rick Castle._

When she turns to the passenger seat he's got that smile on his face that never fails to melt her heart, so she kisses his cheek and reminds him of how petrified her father left her prom date. She had asked him for the story after that conversation with the boys so long ago, and it still makes her laugh.

As it turns out, her dad _does_ love Rick Castle.

She's still not quite sure what happened between them last summer, and sometimes she thinks that she's still not ready to hear it. He's like an over-excited puppy as they leave the diner though, and she finds herself kissing him senseless in front of her car when she realises just how much the meal meant to him. She kisses him for so long that her father walks out after them, and calls out for her to put him down.

She's not quite sure how a simple meal can make her love them both more, but it does.

He talks about Thanksgiving and Christmas and every other major (and minor) holiday with her father and his mother and Alexis for the entire journey home, and waves the sticky note in her face when she threatens to twist his ear.

She steals the note back from him when she parks the car.

It would be unfair to say that their relationship is all smooth sailing, though. She never expected it to be, not with him. They have their rocky moments to say the least, in amongst the good. She knows that she hasn't been quite ready to dive in and she knows that he knows it too. They deal with their fair (excessive) share of near death experiences, and she still doesn't always win the fight against pushing him away when she's in pain. He knows that she gets spooked easily, and she knows that he's more patient than she ever thought he would be. It's not always enough, though.

Sometimes she wants to run. Sometimes she does.

He yells, she yells. They both walk out, more than once.

It's his notes that bring them back though, every time.

Months ago they danced to a song at Jenny and Ryan's wedding. They actually danced to a _lot_ of songs at Jenny and Ryan's wedding, but this Jason Mraz song is the only one that they both remember. It's not even the first line from this particular song that he's written for her, but when she sees this one tucked into the corner of her mirror through the tears in her eyes one night, suddenly he doesn't seem so far away, even though it was her who pushed him away in the first place.

_And when you're needing your space to do some navigating,  
>I'll be here patiently waiting to see what you find<em>

When she finds the note he left beside her bed, she calls him.

_I won't give up on us_

They talk for hours and she falls asleep with her tears dried on her cheeks and his voice through her phone at her ear. When she wakes up the next morning, exhausted and emotional and just wanting him, she finds two text messages from him on her phone. One is another line of lyrics. One is just them.

_I'm giving you all my love_

_Always_

She goes to him.

When she finally tells him that she's in therapy, she expects the tears to come from her. Instead, they come from him. What started as an argument ends with her falling asleep, holding him against her chest with her fingers tangled in his hair.

She has to be in for an early briefing in the morning, and he barely stirs when she extricates herself from his arms. She can't find a pen, so she writes him a note with her eyeliner pencil.

_It's not your fault_

_p.s. you owe me new eyeliner_

From that day, he keeps a pen on her side of the bed.

She tells him about the note she took to her therapy session with her so long ago over dinner the next evening, because she learnt how to read the look in his eyes a long time ago, and she knows that he wishes he could do more.

She tells him so that he knows that he already is.

He writes her a small series of inappropriate notes while they're lying in bed after she tells him they still talk about his notes in her therapy sessions, and she throws every single one back at him before letting him turn a select few into reality.

She doesn't tell Dr Burke about _those_ notes, as it happens.

When Paula manhandles him into a two week book tour of Europe (given the sounds she heard from his office during that conversation, she wouldn't be surprised if that description was literal), he excels himself. She expects the notes he leaves around her apartment, and she isn't surprised by the ones that Alexis gives her each time they meet for coffee. When her dad gives her one when she meets him for brunch the first weekend, she has to stop herself from calling him because it's the early morning in Europe and she has a copy of his schedule on her phone so she knows he was out late the night before. Lanie, Ryan and Esposito also have notes to deliver at strategic points throughout the fortnight, and as they're openly together now she doesn't have to hide her smiles as she accepts them.

Lanie asks her what they say, repeatedly, and she refuses to answer. Ryan and Esposito just think it's _cute _and _sweet_ and _honestly a little bit whipped, bro_ when they're on the phone with Castle (judging by the frequency of their phone calls, she thinks they might miss him almost as much as she does). She threatens to shoot them when they tease him a little too much, but they take her to Remy's after they close the toughest case they've worked in months, and Esposito calls Castle because it's the middle of the night in London and she won't, and she _really_ needs to hear his voice.

After that, all she can think is that she really does love her boys.

The day that Alexis leaves for college (albeit one that's as close as she always expected it to be), she is there in the morning with a send-off pancake breakfast and a gift that she makes Alexis swear she won't open until she gets there. Castle doesn't know what it is, but to his credit he looks on curiously and says nothing. She suspects he thinks that one of them will tell him later, anyway.

She leaves after breakfast with hugs for all of the Castle-Rodgers family, and an extra one for Alexis. She knows Martha will make her exit soon after, because they have already agreed that this is a father-daughter moment that neither wants to intrude on. With one little caveat.

She leaves a note stuck to the top of his laptop before she leaves.

_Call me_

_(I mean it)_

And when he calls her less than an hour later with tears in his voice because his little girl has gone, she leaves her second coffee half touched in the café around the corner from his building and walks right back into his arms.

Part of the present she gave Alexis was a series of postcards with quotes from famous authors on them. Alexis sends them to her father through the course of her first semester, and the looks he gives her every time one appears in his pile of mail quite literally melt her heart (she doesn't tell him about the other part of the present because it's a girl thing, and it's nothing bad but there are some things that a father just doesn't need to know).

When he asks her to move in with him, it's accompanied by an elaborate drawing of a house. She calls him on the fact that he doesn't _have_ an actual house for her to move in to (after she's said yes, of course). He laughs, and points out that he does have a house in the Hamptons. She lets him get away with that and take her to bed to celebrate, because that very same house in the Hamptons has fast become her favourite getaway, and even her PTSD and the way her body still aches sometimes don't seem as bad when they're out there.

As they finally get to pack up her apartment a couple of weeks later when murder stops getting in the way, she takes the box down from the top of her bookshelf and shows him the history of their relationship that she's catalogued, topped by his drawing of a house. They go back to the loft to sleep that night because they've spent the whole day in her apartment, and he insists that she takes the box with her. Insists that it should be the first thing she officially moves in (even though an embarrassing amount of her clothes and shoe collection can already be found in his closet).

When they do make it back to the loft, she sits cross-legged on his bed with the box in front of her as he gives her a small pile of letters. Letters that he wrote her over the summer but never sent. He offers to give her some privacy to read them but she won't let him leave, refuses to open a single letter until he's sitting behind her, his thighs warm against her ribs as she settles back against him.

She's crying before she even finishes the first line, and his hands are warm and comforting on her arms as she tells him that he's ruined her.

When she finishes, they add the letters to the box together.

The day that she officially moves in, he presents her with two things. Her loft keys on a beautiful silver elephant keyring (which he stole from her, because she's had them on her own keys for months), and a beautiful, ornately carved wooden box. Her own box is almost overflowing, and he explains that this is for part two. When she opens the box, there's a small typed note sitting at the bottom.

_For KB. Who will always get the first page. _

When she asks him what it is, he tells her it's the dedication page from his next novel. When she flicks her eyes away to blink away the tears, she notices the thick manuscript sitting on her side of the bed. And suddenly, as she runs her fingers over the words, she isn't scared by all of the things that are going to fill this box.

Because if the first one is like this, how great are the rest going to be?

* * *

><p><em>I won't give up on us, even if the skies get rough<br>I'm giving you all my love  
><em>_I'm still looking up_

* * *

><p><em>fin.<em>


End file.
